New from Apple, the iTree

August 21, 2008

By Stacey Ho

From hundred dollar laptops and hybrid cars to biodegradable grocery bags, new designs for everyday objects suggest a new fusion between consumption and sustainability. Likewise, plant(iPod)installation uses sound, sculpture and narrative to imagine a new synthesis between nature and technology.

In this exhibition, Jane Tingley combines steel and delicately carved cork to create ‘prosthetics’ that cradle houseplants, so that “they’re being nurtured by technology rather than being used by it.”

Electronic elements mesh into organic ones, resulting in poetic hybrids of the two. Different recordings of breathing convolve with a textural sound collage of mechanical noise to envelope the space in a sound like breathing water. As a viewer walks through the exhibition, sensors are triggered so that a story emits out of speakers which are hidden amongst the leaves of each plant.